MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03608cam a2200397 a 4500
001 4046341
005 20221027023935.0
008 940520t19951995njuab b 001 0 eng
010 $a 94019328
020 $a0691034869 :$c$35.00
035 $a(OCoLC)30626080
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm30626080
035 $9AKJ3879HS
035 $a(NNC)4046341
035 $a4046341
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dNNC$dNNC-M$dOrLoB
043 $aa-ph---
050 00 $aRA650.7.P6$bD4 1995
082 00 $a614.4/2599$220
100 1 $aDe Bevoise, Ken,$d1943-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n89618568
245 10 $aAgents of apocalypse :$bepidemic disease in the colonial Philippines /$cKen De Bevoise.
260 $aPrinceton, NJ :$bPrinceton University Press,$c[1995], ©1995.
300 $axiv, 274 pages :$billustrations, maps ;$c25 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 00 $tMap of Asia and the East Indies, 1875 --$tMap of Philippine Provinces and Principal Islands, 1890 --$tIntroduction: Dimensions of the Crisis --$gCh. 1.$tProbability of Contact --$gCh. 2.$tSusceptibility --$gCh. 3.$tVenereal Disease: Evolution of a Social Problem --$gCh. 4.$tSmallpox: Failure of the Health Care System --$gCh. 5.$tBeriberi: Fallout from Cash Cropping --$gCh. 6.$tMalaria: Disequilibrium in the Total Environment --$gCh. 7.$tCholera: The Island World as an Epidemiological Unit --$tConclusion: Intervention and Disease.
520 $aAs waves of epidemic disease swept the Philippines in the late nineteenth century, physicians in the islands began to fear that the indigenous population would be wiped out. Many Filipinos interpreted the contagions as a harbinger of the Biblical Apocalypse. Though the direst forebodings did not come to pass, Philippine morbidity and mortality rates were the world's highest during the period 1883-1903.
520 8 $aIn Agents of Apocalypse, Ken De Bevoise bypasses the simplistic conclusion that Spanish and American colonialism in the Philippines caused the epidemics. Instead, he explains that those "mourning years" resulted from a conjunction of demographic, economic, technological, cultural, and political processes that had been building for centuries.
520 8 $aThroughout the book, the author highlights the complexity of cause and effect, which among other things accounts for the unintended consequences and tragic irony that characterize this history.
520 8 $aOn another level, the book is an ecology of human actions. De Bevoise uses the Philippine experience as a case study to explore the extent to which humans participate in creating their diseases. He interprets the archival record with conceptual guidance from the health sciences to set the nineteenth-century epidemics in a historical framework that shows people interacting with, rather than acting within, their total environment.
520 8 $aEmphasizing the role of human actions in clearing the way for epidemic disease, he concludes that we are the primary agents of apocalypse. Readers from fields as diverse as Spanish, American, and Philippine history, medical anthropology, colonialism, international relations, Asian studies, and ecology will benefit from De Bevoise's insights into the interdynamics of historical processes that connect humans and their diseases.
650 0 $aEpidemiology$zPhilippines.
650 2 $aEpidemiology.$0https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D004813
651 2 $aPhilippines.$0https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D010679
852 00 $boff,hsl$hRA650.7.P6$iD4 1995